Bush withdraws 1 of 19 pardons

The president had issued the pardon Tuesday. The White House says a previously unknown political contribution may have created 'an appearance of impropriety.'
By Peter Wallsten
LA Times

December 25, 2008

Reporting from Washington — President Bush today took the extraordinary step of revoking a pardon he issued 24 hours earlier for a politically connected Brooklyn real estate developer convicted of defrauding hundreds of low-income home buyers after it was revealed that the request did not come through the usual route and that a relative had contributed to the Republican Party.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said she knew of no other time a presidential pardon had been reversed.

On Tuesday, Bush pardoned 19 people, including Isaac Robert Toussie, who had been convicted of mail fraud and of making false statements to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Stories in the New York Daily News and Newsday said that Toussie's father, Robert, had donated $28,500 to the national Republican Party in April. It was his first political donation and came months before Toussie's pardon petition, which did not go through the usual review process in the Justice Department.

(More here.)